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Older Women With Breathing Problems During Sleep

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Older women with disordered breathing during sleep were found to be at greater risk of decline in the ability to perform daily activities, such as grocery shopping and meal preparation, according to research led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of California, San Francisco. The study was published November 6th 2014 in the online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

A release from Johns Hopkins explains that the findings are notable given the aging of the population – an estimated 3.7 million Americans will turn 65 in 2015, and by 2030, 19 percent of the U.S. population will be 65 or older – and the fact that sleep-disordered breathing is treatable. Older adults are as much as four times as likely as middle-aged individuals to have problems with breathing during sleep.

Sleep-disordered breathing involves repeated interruptions or decreases in breathing during sleep, which often leads to fragmented sleep and hypoxemia, or low blood oxygen levels. Doctors rate the severity of sleep-disordered breathing with the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI), which reflects the number of breathing interruptions (apneas) and the number of significant decreases in breathing (hypopneas) per hour of sleep.

The study found that women with an AHI on the moderate to severe side, with 15 or more breathing disruptions per hour of sleep, had a 2.2 times greater odds of decline in daily activity functions during the evaluation period, which averaged five years between baseline evaluation and follow-up.

The release quotes lead author Adam Spira, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as saying, “Because sleep-disordered breathing can be treated effectively, it is possible that treatment could help prevent decline in important areas of functioning that allow older adults to remain independent. As is often the case, more research is needed to investigate this possibility.”

Because the study was observational, the researchers can’t conclusively state that sleep-disordered breathing caused the functional decline, but the research does point to a strong link.
Earlier studies involving older men have linked sleep-disordered breathing with frailty and death. The authors believe this is one of the first studies to assess the impact of sleep-disordered breathing on decline in older women’s ability to perform basic functions associated with independent living.